Life's all about bearing spiritual fruit.

Tag Archives: Establishment Clause

America’s first two hundred years gave safety and security to God’s church. During this “Golden Age” of religious freedom, Our Constitution’s Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom from government-imposed religious conformity. For the first 170 of those years the church thrived; even non-church-goers respected the Bible and those who believed in it. Then a fundamental, three-pronged attack on those freedoms began, as sinister as the mythical
Neptune’s trident.

The First Prong

After World War II ended, German scientists emigrated in droves, scientists indoctrinated under Hitler’s nationalistic anti-Christian, anti-humanist establishment. I say anti-humanist because humanism was a liberal philosophy that encouraged academic freedom of thought and inquiry, but such freedoms weren’t Hitler’s cup of tea. Those scientists landed in government research, industry and academia, and while some of them adapted well to our Judeo-Christian culture base, others militantly held to their atheistic or pagan roots.

While historical humanism was liberal in the sense of tolerating other philosophies and embracing all freedoms, it has evolved toward atheistic secularism, carrying liberals along with it, and causing this prong to stab even deeper into our religious freedoms. As a philosophy, humanism tends to color all academic inquiry, including that of many religious schools. But it is also a religion, as it asserts a belief-system that elevates humanity to the sovereign throne of ultimate authority—in other words, God. As such, it tends to seek dominance, trying to become the piranha in the river of religions, and has virtually become our state religion.

The Second Prong

Half-way into the twentieth-century, we settled comfortably into our easy chairs, squarely in front of our new television sets. TV antennas sprouted from rooftops like tall weeds in a lawn. Commercials splashed products into our homes that many of us never would have imagined, and we bought them. TV entertainment soon became big business, and big business has a way of changing things. As the song lyrics go, “How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?” And our TV screens dropped “Paree” right into our laps. The TV networks’ programming gradually began challenging our customary standards of decency and propriety, which wasn’t hard to do. We gobbled it all right up, and never became sated with the glitz and glamour. In fact, we wanted it—we wanted it badly.

At first the church resisted all that wanton entertainment and commercialism, but it soon became so mundane that we no longer raised an eyebrow to it. Of course, we’d never consider doing those things ourselves. But as we watched the soaps, quiz shows, musical extravaganzas and sports spectaculars, we began thinking of what that little screen delivered as the norm. “Why can’t I have a life like that?” we asked ourselves, and the little screen provided the answer … CREDIT! Of course, the other side of the credit coin is debt, and rather than owning our possessions, our possessions, and the bankers, owned us. But we were living like kings, so who cares?

The Third Prong

The guarantees that our nation’s Founding Fathers had intended as a safe haven for believers and non-believers alike backfired. Before long, the church became complacent in their security. The unity they had clung to for safety became unnecessary, so differences and squabbles, instead of being resolved as they usually had, produced division and schism. Old-line denominations split at the drop of a hymnal, with the new leaders’ idealism soon degrading into a new, staid conventionality. Church doctrines were engraved in stone and perched high atop ivory towers, never to be challenged until some new, charismatic leader, like the pied piper, drew away those who loved his music more than unity.

Televangelists try to compete with entertainment television’s glitz and glamour,with lavish sets and costumes, and their prosperity-gospel’s emphasis on worldly possessions as a demonstration of God’s

Giving by grace through faith? That is blatant corruption of the gospel.

obedience to their demands. And they’ve succeed in seducing many in the church who are gullible enough to support their kingly lifestyle with “faith-partnerships” and “Grace giving,” while neglecting the local church’s valid financial needs.

As materialism eroded the church’s charitable giving, the federal government’s new-liberalism gleefully stepped into the gap with programs to “improve” the poor’s lot in life. Whether or not the welfare-state was calculated to create a government-dependent class and a cottage industry of cheating the system, that is the effect it had.

Rather than looking upon the poor with love, we religious-types began looking down our noses at them, resenting the government support they received that our ever-increasing taxes funded. Simply put, we quit loving the poor, and anyone else who didn’t act, look, and smell like us. We couldn’t grasp the spiritual law that says, where love fails, God removes his Spirit.

We, like the Laodicean church of Revelation, are becoming neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, and are in danger of being vomited out of God’s mouth. And we wonder why the church is impotent in today’s culture.

The church-age of fool’s gold is upon us, and only Holy Spirit-led revival will divert our course toward perdition. “Revival” requires a life that can be revived. It’s not about wholesale evangelism, but the church’s repentance. Right now, a remnant of faithful believers is praying passionately for that revival. Are you one of them? Are you part of the solution, or part of the problem? If you are not part of the solution, you must repent of the sin of complacency, in sackcloth and ashes if necessary. That means turning away from your material hoard, and the values that built it. It means changing your habits, your entertainments, your loves, from what the world dictates to what Christ died to give us. It means allowing, even seeking, brokenness of spirit, so God’s Holy Spirit can rebuild you, me, and the church, in Christ’s holy image.

If you and I fail in this charge, God will bring about the change he wants the hard way, by purging and purifying his church through persecution’s fire. The choice is ours.

Like this:

I followed a link to a Facebook page called, “American White History Month.” On it, I found a slogan with which I, though about as white as one can be, cannot agree. With it, however, I found a true statement, which I will quote first, “Never apologize for being white.”

I’ve done many things during my sixty-eight years for which I could indeed apologize, but why would I apologize for being what God made me? That would be like apologizing for being male, or human. Though males and whites, indeed, all humans, do despicable things, we don’t do them because we are a particular sex or color; we do them because we are sinful.

The second slogan on that page proclaims far more than its creators realize. “Proud of our race and heritage,” seems dangerously close to taking credit for God’s creative work. We didn’t choose to be born white, and of European heritage, so how can we be proud of that? We can certainly be glad of it, and thankful for it, just as people of color can be glad and thankful for who they are. Following, are Bible passages that deal with pride and its consequences:

Ephesians 5:15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise,16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21

1 Thessalonians 5:15 See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. 16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise prophecies, 21 but test everything; hold fast what is good. 22 Abstain from every form of evil.

1 Timothy 4:4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

Pride in something, and gratitude for it, are antithetical, if at once, one takes credit for it, and gives credit for it. So, which will it be? The passages above, and many more, command gratitude, but never does God’s Word tell us to take pride in what he gave us; even though we may have worked hard for something, or even invented it, we didn’t create it. Such pride is most certainly one form of evil.

As for our heritage, we are a nation born of Christian principles, and that, according to our Constitution’s Establishment Clause, is where our national Christianity ends. As Premier Obama said, America was never a Christian nation. Fact is, we can take pride in no nation governed by fallen human beings, as everything they do is based in sin, even if it seems noble. But we can, and must, remain thankful for it.

Pass it around.

Like this:

Our Founding Fathers tried to make totalitarianism impossible in the United States.

I happened to watch an old episode of BREAKOUT KINGS, where the team encountered a group of “patriots.” While I agree in principle with the fictitious group’s position on governmental overreach, I can’t stomach the terrorist-style violence employed to make their point. When true American patriots descend into the bloody gutter of aggressive violence and hate crimes, they abdicate the moral high-ground, and become just another corrupt band of bullies as bad as, or worse than, the bully government they’re fighting.

But the producers’ almost-subliminal, secondary message came even closer to turning my stomach; the fictitious “patriots” were militant racists. While some “patriots” hold that sick, hateful world view, true patriots hold to our Founding Fathers’ Biblical world view that mandates equality under law for everyone, even if it’s still a dream.

The religious-right’s myth that the United States of America is, or ever was, a Christian nation clouds uncountable issues. Our founding fathers suffered and died to prevent that from happening. The last thing they wanted to establish was a theocracy, where Christianity, or any other religion, could be established as the state religion. That’s why they included the Establishment Clause in our Bill of Rights. After all their efforts, however, our usurpers’ government has established an official, state religion.

Our Constitution included a then revolutionary process called checks-and-balances, where one arm of government could not hold sway over the other two. But the religion of Secular Humanism invaded our government through the back door of judicial activism, and hasn’t stopped since. It’s already weakened our nation, and will eventually end our form of government. Unlike fictional accounts of that inevitable failure, we’ll probably keep our national name, while the usurpers’ government quietly dispatches dissenters everywhere.